100 Years Revealed: Catalan Chalet Confirmed as Gaudí’s Centenary Work | Antoni Gaudí

An elegant modern building in the mountains north of Barcelona, ​​originally built to house engineers constructing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as the work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most famous and distinguished architect.

Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the province of Bergueda, was built in 1905 and commissioned by Euseppe Güell, Gaudí’s lifelong patron. Goel was the owner of a cement company with mines in the area and needed a place to house engineers, many of them British, who would help extract coal for his factories.

It has long been suspected that the chalet, now no longer in use, was the work of Gaudí but historians have never established the architect with certainty. The building contains elements of Gaudí’s naturalistic style, evoking the forms of flora and fauna that would later be expressed in works such as Park Güell and Casa Batlló in Barcelona. The pointed arch structure also foreshadows Gaudí’s most famous work, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Sonia Hernández Almodovar, Catalan Minister of Culture, said that this award was the result of “meticulous research that has enormous value for our heritage” and enriched Gaudí’s legacy on the centenary of his death.

The analysis was carried out by the Department of Catalan Heritage led by the Head of Gaudí Studies, Galdric Santana Roma. “After a lot of research, we concluded that Xalet del Catllaràs is the work of Gaudí,” he said. “However, this attribution is strictly limited to the initial stages of the project as Gaudí did not supervise the work which did not faithfully follow the original design.”

Santana said the process of certifying an architectural work is completely different from the drawing process, and the knowledge gained in studying the chalet will contribute to the investigation of other works attributed to Gaudí.

Gaudí died on 10 June 1926, aged 73, three days after a tram accident in Barcelona, ​​and numerous commemorative events and exhibitions are scheduled to take place throughout the centenary year.

The installation of the final elements of the illuminated cross atop the Sagrada Familia’s central Jesus Christ tower in June, more than 140 years after the project began in 1882, will likely have the most lasting impact on the city’s skyline.

Initially funded by repentant sinners, and more recently by tourism, the completion of the tower, at 172.5 metres, will make it the tallest building in Barcelona. The Sagrada Família is already the tallest church in the world since part of its central tower was lifted into place in October.

Gaudí devoted the latter part of his life to the Sagrada Familia, but little of it was completed during the architect’s lifetime, and work was virtually halted at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The rise of mass tourism after the 1992 Olympics helped make Barcelona a popular tourist destination, and work on the church accelerated and moved into its final stages.

Work on the Glory’s facade is expected to continue for another 10 years, and there remains the thorny issue of constructing the grand entrance staircase, according to Gaudí’s original plan, which now entails the rehousing of 10,000 people and the demolition of some 3,000 apartments.